Hotlead 2017

Hotlead 2017 has come and gone already. Now it's the post-Hotlead recovery and longing.

This year went the smoothest ever, for me at least. Michelle, who's husband attends regularly, asked if she could be of more help and she took over the game scheduling in between having a baby. So that was a huge headache off my shoulders.

Plus she's younger, and has decent technical skills, so I now have a nice digital hall layout I can work with. Her new born was also a happy attendee, making the new mom's weekend easier.

Friday was well attended. Lots of games. I tried to get a few snaps in between playing a massive Dragon Rampant game with the Mad Padre. Most of my Middle Earth troops with most of his. My good guys faced off against his bad guys and at the other end his good guys faced my bad guys. Over 110 points per side!

There was much fun and under the Padre's command, my werewolf finally found his mojo and did something. Apparently he ate Theoden. I didn't see. My Ents were busy thrashing his Dunlendings.

Some pictures:

20mm Vietnam

28mm Arthurian 

15mm Russo-Polish War

I

A pick up VSF game

Dan Hutter's game with drug smugglers, pirates, mercenaries and corrupt government forces somewhere in the Mekong River

Chrysler's Farm

Saturday was also booming. Line ups, activity at the Bring and Buy, crowds of happy gamers. I don't know if it's because the economy is improving or because I've delegated running things to more capable hands, but attendance was up a solid 10% (from 260 paid admissions last year to 291. GMs and Vendors are on top of that.).

Saturday morning. On line registration would be another level of difficulty however.

Busy hall

We had a great assortment of games; naval, air, space, micro scale to a massive 28mm Napoleonic battle. Here is an assortment of pictures:

Space fleets

ACW ironclad

Space fighters over the Death Star (using X-Wing rules)

Battle of Kursk

Micro scale Napoleonic battle using Blucher rules

Brian's IABSM game refighting 3 CID attacking Buron in Normandy, July 1944

Another micro scale game, Franco-Prussian War I think, using Bloody Big Battles

Ian Tetlow always does gorgeous games. This one is an Iran-Iraq War battle

A hot LZ in Cambodia. Some 20mm Charlie Company.

Super Heroes

Drop dead gorgeous Stalingrad game from the London Miniature Gaming Society

More of the table. Bolt Action rules

Battle of Eylau. 28mm. Shako rules

Something in the Italian Wars

Russo-Finnish War, Chain of Command rules

More of Eylau

Canadian Corps storms Vimy Ridge by the Bytown Barbarians of Ottawa

Frostgrave

A beautiful table featuring a 28mm Indian village

Dan's pulp silly hat game

Keith and Pete brought out their Battle of Ridgeway game with improved terrain and troops. The house above is a model of the Anger farmhouse on the actual battlefield. Black Powder rules.

Green Beach at Dieppe (more Bolt Action)

15mm samurai (Chipco's Chrysanthemum Throne rules)

Saxons storming a Romano-British fort using the Dux Britannarum rules. Frank Kailik's Dux Britannarum games have become hugely popular and always have good eye candy. I was one of the defenders btw. We are now happy to welcome our new Saxon overlords.

I left my tablet at home on Sunday. But the room was hopping with more Kursk, more Dieppe, more Star Wars assault, some Road Kill, and the annual big VSF game. Plus some more.

I was pleased to see the wide variety of genres and rules being used. There was an excellent variety of historical periods. I think the only one missing was Victorian Colonial to be honest. There was also a good variety of Canadian themed games (Chrysler's Farm, Ridgeway, Vimy Ridge, Buron.... I guess I should have brought my Afghanistan stuff to complete it).

More pictures can be found in my Flickr Album here.

There's also been a nice number of blog posts about other people's Hotlead experiences helping to spread the word. Check them out. They saw things from different angles. Played and GMed different games and took more good pictures.

The Mad Padre

Mike Hoyt (with all the space ships)

Jacob Stauttener

Chris Robinson (who ran a couple of nice games too)

and this one with more good pictures.

So there we are. Just need to sort out the Charitable donations, pay some last invoices and nail down the date for next year.